London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good morning to you, London Walkers.
Wherever you are.
It’s Friday, February 27th, 2026.
And here it is.
Your daily London fix.
Now hear this.
The Bayeux Tapestry is coming to London, bringing the drama of the Norman Conquest of 1066 back to the capital.
In today’s London Calling podcast we explore King Harold’s fatal arrow at the Battle of Hastings and why this
thousand-year-old story still shapes modern London.
Here we go.
Let’s step into that room.
All those years ago.
And what’s that, you say.
It’s exactly what it looks like,
a long strip of linen.
Nearly seventy metres of it.
Wool threads marching across it like medieval paparazzi.
Kings plotting.
Ships launching.
Horses thundering.
And one unfortunate English monarch about to have the worst optician’s appointment in history.
And now the big news.
The Bayeux Tapestry is coming to London.
Yes. Really.
Pinch yourself.
Check your pulse.
This is not historical clickbait.
This is the genuine,
needle-stitched article.
And if you have even a teaspoon of interest in London, England,
or the moment everything changed in 1066,
this is your cue to sit up very straight indeed.
Because exhibitions come and go.
But this one?
This one has once-in-a-generation written all over it in very expensive wool.
First, let us clear up the delicious technicality.
The Bayeux Tapestry is not actually a tapestry.
I know.
The name has been lying to us for centuries.
It is, in fact, an embroidery.
Wool thread stitched onto linen, probably in England in the 1070s. Most likely in Kent.
Almost certainly commissioned by Bishop Odo,
William the Conqueror’s
half-brother and
chief Norman hype man.
Seventy metres long.
About the length of a cricket pitch. If you tried to unroll it down the Strand you’d cause traffic chaos, three minor diplomatic incidents, and at least one Very Cross bus driver.
And what does it show?
In essence,
the greatest political upset in English history.
The road to the Battle of Hastings. Harold. William.
Shipyards working overtime. Banquets being demolished with heroic enthusiasm.
Halley’s Comet blazing ominously overhead.
And then, of course, the moment every schoolchild remembers.
Harold.
Arrow.
Eye.
History can be brutally concise.
Now here is where London enters the chat.
Because the tapestry is not just about a battle in Sussex.
It’s about the seismic shockwave that followed,
and is still being felt nearly a thousand years later.
Some scholars even suggest the Norman Conquest is still,
very quietly,
showing up
in British bank balances.
Because 1066 was not just a change of management.
It was a wholesale rewiring of England’s ruling class.
Norman names surged.
Anglo-Saxon names rather less so. And if you tune your ear to the surnames drifting through the upper decks of British life today, you may just catch the faintest clink of Norman armour.
After 1066, London changes. Dramatically. Permanently.
William the Conqueror does not hang about.
Up goes the Tower of London. Norman stone muscle replaces Anglo-Saxon timber.
The ruling elite of England is effectively swapped out like a tired theatre cast after a bad first night.
If you want to understand why London looks the way it does today,
this embroidery is one of the master keys.
It is ground zero for Norman London.
Now. Let us talk rarity.
The Bayeux Tapestry does not pop out for a cheeky weekend very often.
It lives in Bayeux in Normandy under conditions so carefully controlled they probably monitor the humidity with the intensity of a Wimbledon line judge.
For it to travel is rare.
For it to cross the Channel is seismic.
And according to the latest reporting,
the British Museum is already signalling just how hot this ticket is likely to be.
Visitors are being advised to sign up to the British Museum newsletter to receive ticket updates.
Translation into plain English.
When tickets drop, they are going to go like hot croissants at Waterloo at 8:43 on a Monday morning.
This is your London Walks early warning system.
The friendly tap on the shoulder. The quiet voice saying:
do not sleepwalk past this one.
Because here is the joy of the Bayeux Tapestry.
It is not dusty.
It is not dull.
It is not one of those worthy objects you feel you ought to admire while secretly wondering what is for lunch.
It is alive.
It is practically the world’s first graphic novel.
Frame by frame storytelling. Movement.
Drama.
Gossip in wool.
You can see the swagger of the Normans.
The anxiety of the English.
The sheer logistical headache of medieval shipbuilding.
And the details.
Oh, the details.
Dogs. Feasts. Armour.
Blokes pointing urgently at things. It rewards slow looking in the most satisfying way imaginable.
Frankly, if it were released today, someone in California would already be pitching the streaming rights.
So here’s the practical bit.
The London Walks white-glove service moment.
If this exhibition is even remotely on your cultural radar – and it should be –
sign up for the British Museum ticket alerts.
Yes, it is mildly bureaucratic.
Yes, it involves an email.
But Future You, standing happily in front of 70 metres of medieval storytelling
while everyone else
is wailing outside the sold-out sign,
will be deeply grateful.
Aim for early in the run if you can. Weekday mornings will almost certainly be your friend.
And if past London blockbusters are anything to go by,
hesitation will not be a winning strategy.
The FOMO potential here is… substantial.
You have been kindly warned.
And there is one final delicious thought.
Nearly a thousand years ago, English stitchers probably sat in Canterbury or thereabouts, patiently sewing the story of England’s conquest by a Norman duke.
Now that same stitched story is making the journey back across the Channel to the very city whose destiny it helped rewrite.
History,
when it’s in a good mood,
does love a neat flourish.
So when the Bayeux Tapestry arrives in London,
make a date with it.
Go and see it.
Because some exhibitions are interesting.
Some are important.
And a very small number
are the sort
you will still be talking about years from now.
This one, my fellow London walkers, has that look about it.
You’ve been listening to
This… is London, the London Walks podcast.
Emanating from www.walks.com.
Home of London Walks, London’s signature walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it, London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £25 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science: you get what you pay for.
And just as surely, you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question: Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world you do whatever you have to do to attract and keep the best guides in London – you want them guiding for you, not for somebody else.
Bears repeating: the way we’re structured – a guides’ cooperative – is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following, a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor (and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated – Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa – both of them CBEs – are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Jack the Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z, “internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star Team of Guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes a former Member of Parliament, three terms at Westminster, bringing first-hand experience of power, policy and political theatre to the very streets where it all played out.
It includes two barristers, three doctors, two geologists, a distinguished museum curator and a former Time out Editor.
It includes authors, historians, national journalists, a former London Museum archaeologist, and university professors (one of them an eminent Cambridge University paleontologist).
It includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre actors, and two professional photographers. And last but not least, the creme de la creme of top flight professionally qualified Blue Badge Guides, including a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)… well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament, every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar and the familiar new.
And here’s the clincher. We’re playing at home.
London Walks is London-based. Period.
We’re not an impersonal, faceless platform run from halfway round the world. There’s no chatbot. No call-centre script. When you contact us, you reach a real person. A Londoner. Someone who actually knows the streets you’re about to walk.
That’s not a detail. That’s the difference.
And on that agreeable note… come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning one and all. See ya next time.